All Fired Up!
by Meowth's Toon Dragon
Summary: When a series of unfortunate events leaves an HTF stuck in a gruesome form, who will survive the wrath of the unlucky...
1. A Series of Deadly Events

**All fired up**

Starring Rhyme, Mime, and Lumpy

Featuring Pop, Disco Bear, Cuddles, Sniffles, Handy, Flippy, Lifty, Shifty, and Nutty

Note: It's my birthday today! Whee-hoo! To celebrate, I'm putting up not 1, not 2... but THREE new stories, including an all-new, never before seen Rhyme episode! This is it... the third one... an all-new, never before seen Rhyme story... one so big that it had to be split up into 3 different parts!! Here... we... go!!

Second note: You know my deal with squeaknese already.. But because of some of the heavy dialouge in the ep, you may wanna consider there being subtitles at some parts

We start in the Happy Tree Mortuary where we see Mime and Rhyme being given instructions by Lumpy the mortician for their graveyard shift. (Sorry, bad pun). He tells them in squeakenese that their job is to make sure the place is clean by sunrise; cadavers put away, Lumpy's cheese collection organized by size, caskets set up for the crematorium, etc. As Mime and Rhyme give the signal that they're clear with Lumpys instructions and the moose walks out the front doors, locking them behind him, the two fawn look around at the mess the mortuary is and sigh... it's gonna be a LONG night...

7 hours later, we can see that the whole of the mortuary is all spic and span, but the two fawn are exhausted! Rhyme looks at a clock on the wall and discovers that it's no wonder they're so tired... it's 3 in the morning! The two want to go home, but as Mime goes to the front door, he sees the padlock on the outside of the door and realizes the idiot moose locked them in! Miming giving a frustrated groan, Mime turns back to Rhyme with a sad look in his eyes. Rhyme starts to groan himself, just wanting to get into bed, but then remembers the new deluxe caskets they set up for the incinerator and how plush and comfy they looked inside. The two of them walk over to the caskets and, opening the lids, crawl inside the coffins, lay back against the plush satin cushions inside and soon find themselves asleep with the covers to the coffins lifted open.

5 hours later, Lumpy unlocks the front doors and walks into the mortuary, admiring how clean and shiny the place looks. "I must remember to give those boys some of my cheese.", Lumpy thinks as he looks for the deer, but unable to find them. It's then that he sees the coffin laying against the conveyor belt leading into the incinerator with it's door open. "They must've put a body in for me to practice burning! How nice of them!". Walking over to the casket, he closes the lid and, after locking the casket, lifts it onto the beltline and pulls on the switches starting the flames and causing the casket to slowly be pulled into the incinerator...

Hearing the flames start is enough to wake Mime up and, as he slowly gets up from his resting place, he looks around for the source of the noise, only to see in horror that the casket with Rhyme in it is being sent into the furnace! Leaping out of his coffin, he rushes to Lumpy and frantically mimes that his cousin's asleep in the casket he's burning! But Lumpy just laughs at Mime and turns his attention to the coffin going into the flames...

As Rhyme slumbers in his coffin, he feels a small tingling sensation and opens his eyes a little, just thinking that his foot fell asleep. But to his shock, he sees his feet are on fire! He starts to lift his head up, but quickly bumps it against the top of the now-closed and locked coffin and soon realizes that he's been trapped inside! Frantically, he starts pushing and scratching at the top of the coffin, screaming madly for someone to let him out! But his cries are muffled by the sound of the raging furnace slowly starting to consume his casket.

Mime desperately tries to get to the switches controlling the fire, but Lumpy holds him back, saying it's a moose's job to handle the shiny switches! Now seeing the casket more than halfway in the incinerator, Mime actually kicks Lumpy in the leg and rushes towards the switches, pulling down on them so hard they nearly break off and succeeding in stopping the beltline and flames... but when he pulls out the casket and unlocks the coffin to let his cousin out, he sees a horrific sight... Rhyme's body has nearly completely reduced to ashes by the fire with only his head and a small part of his chest even remotely intact. When he looks at the top of the casket, he sees the frantic bloody clawmarks from where his cousin tried to get the top of the coffin open and gags, barely able to swallow down his stomach. But when he looks at Rhyme's intact face, he's overwhelmed and, rushing to the open furnace door, Mime vomits onto the last few flames, putting them out. It's then that we see what revolted Mime... Rhyme's face frozen in a look of utmost terror, his eyes wide with shock and his mouth open in a frozen scream, a dark red ring around his forehead from where his headband has melted into his flesh...

Nighttime has fallen on Happy Tree Land as almost all the characters gather around at the graveyard to mourn Rhyme's tragic death. Mime's beside himself in silent tears, actually wearing a black-and-white striped shirt instead of his usual purple-and-white, in mourning. With tears in everyone's eyes, they all watch as Rhyme is lowered into his eternal resting place, not one of them leaving until the last bit of dirt is shoveled onto the casket. As Priest Toothy reads the last prayers before the casket is covered by 6 feet of earth, we see Giggles gently place a bouquet of roses on Rhyme's grave, the flowers held together by a spare headband Rhyme had given her during one of his performances.

An hour later, we pan into the local Happy Tree Chemical Plant where we see Sniffles and the Mole working in a lab, the former busy pouring a dark reddish liquid into a set of beakers. The anteater's spent the better part of 72 hours working and crafting a potion that will ressurect the dead and he still has a few bugs to work out in it. Sniffles yells for the Mole to turn on the A.C., as the heat required to get some of the chemicals stabilized has reached that of 100 degrees. But as Mole walks blindly over to the A.C., we see him press not the button for the air conditioner, but a big red button marked DO NOT TOUCH!! A strident alarm fills the plant building, one that Sniffles immediately recognizes as the self-destruct alarm and immediately the anteater heads for a nearby window and uses a chair to shatter the window before he jumps through, cutting himself severely on the broken glass, and dives for cover not 5 seconds before the whole of the plant explodes in a ball of flame, instantly incinerating the Mole and destroying nearly all the equipment inside. But as Sniffles slowly looks up, already woozy from the blood loss, and glances back at the wreckage that was the chemical plant, he hears a loud whistling going through the air. When he looks up, he sees to his horror that an intact bottle of a dark purple liquid covered by a stopper, one that he instantly recognizes as one of the first failed attempts at his ressurection potion, has been blown sky high from the explosion and is headed towards the direction of the graveyard and the last thought that runs through his mind before he collapses from the massive amount of blood pouring from his wounds is "Where... will... it...land..."

Sure enough, the bottle comes to land on a grave near a bouquet of roses, the impact enough to project the stopper 10 feet away from the bottle, and topples over, spilling its contents down amidst the dirt and slowly seeping into the occupants grave. But when we pan down, we see that the occupant of the grave is Rhyme, who's having the purple liquid drip down through his coffin and onto his remains, his intact face being splattered with the goo. A few seconds pass before... we see Rhyme's eyes pop open...

We pan outside onto Rhyme's grave and see a HUGE gout of flame rise up and incinerate nearly the entire gravesite, the force of the wave shooting the headband-wrapped roses slamming against another nearby cross-shaped headstone and getting hung up by the headband stuck on the top of the cross. As the fire rages on, we see a shadowy form rise up from the flames and walk out of the flames towards the cross. Suddenly a wind picks up the headband and floats it onto the figure's silhoutted head, loosening the flowers and scattering him on the ground near the cross. It's not until the flames suddenly stop that we see who the figure is... Rhyme! But now we can see Rhyme's been changed... into what appears to be his head and what little of his chest was not burned up in the incinerator floating in mid-air. We zoom into his face and see his eyes, once black and cheerful, are now fiery red and an inhuman grin spread across his face. Suddenly, we see his eyes glow pure red and witness the petals of the roses separate and slowly envelope his missing body until they've created a flowery set of armor. As Rhyme looks at his new body, he knows he needs his real form back and coldly walks away from the smoldering ashes of his resting place and out of the graveyard headed straight for town with only one thing on his mind; bloodlust...

In the outskirts of town, we see a familiar face boogeying down to the tunes of the CD player stuck in the pocket of his flashy yellow outfit. As Disco Bear twirls his way past a few trees, we see Rhyme's cold glare peering out of the shadows and his eyes begin to glow red again. Suddenly we hear the music on Disco Bear's player go up to it's maximum volume, startling DB and making him rip off the big purple headset and toss it on the ground... or at least attempt to. As DB watches in shock, the earphones stop in mid-air and shoot around his neck, wrapping the cord around his jugular. Disco Bear suddenly sees the headset come around the other side and head back around the neck, repeating the process until it's wrapped the cord tightly around his windpipe, choking him. It's then that he feels a massive tug on the cords wrapped around his neck, nearly making his eyes bug out and hears a cold... cold voice..

"Boogie..."

Suddenly DB finds himself being lifted up into the air and being SLAMMED down against the ground. It's not until then that we see Rhyme holding the other end of the headphones with a sadistic smile, his eyes nothing but pure red.

"Woogie..."

He lifts both the cord AND, using superhuman strength, DB's prone body up in the air using only the cord and slams them again hard onto the ground. He lifts up DB into the air one more time, with a demonic grin on his formerly cheerful face.

"Woogie!!"

With an inhuman roar, he slams DB so hard into the ground that the impact causes his body to break apart, splattering his blood all over the ground and Rhyme's face and causing the arms, legs, and head to, in essence, pop off, leaving only the torso. As Rhyme licks the wet blood off his face and swallows it, he feels a strange tingling sensation, making him surprised he CAN feel sensations in his "state". But as he looks down, he sees the flowery armor has turned blood-red, the same color as the liquid pouring out of Disco Bear's broken body and out the now-empty sleeves of his outfit and a curious thought runs through his semi-warped mind. Kneeling down, he tears off a small section of the flesh on DB's chest and, without hesitation, eats it, chewing the tough skin a few times before swallowing it. Sure enough, as he looks down, he sees the same section of skin that he'd just consumed reforming onto his own body... in his own original color!. It's then that he makes the startling realization; every piece he consumes becomes a part of his "body"! Looking down at DB's body, he suddenly feels ravenous and, with a guttural cry, he leans down towards the limbless body and starts tearing into it, devouring the flesh, clothing, and organs like they were pieces of candy! Before long, Rhyme's eaten nearly the entire chest and regained all of his missing torso and upper body, minus his arms and legs, the yellow outfit being melded into his familiar black jacket. Admiring his reformed torso and feeling himself closer to getting back to his former self, he turns to chow down on the rest of D.B... only to find the vultures and wolves have already beaten him to it! Angry at having what could have been his new body taken away from him, Rhyme punches fiercely into what little is left of D.B.. But when he raises his "fists" up, he notices a burnt line against what remains of D.B.'s neck, a line Rhyme quickly recognizes as the remains of the cord, fried as if lit aflame by the candles of hell. Almost out of instinct, he places his "hand" against D.B.'s remains... and witnesses them bursting into flames not but 5 seconds later! Rhyme can't believe it... he's become a living sideshow! And as we iris in... we see him start letting out a cackle... an unearthly cackle like an animal...

Moral: Every good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end


	2. Rhyme's Rampage

**All fired up Part 2**

30 minutes later, we pan outside Pop's house, where we see the pipe-smoking bear resting against a lawn chair, Cub tucked nicely into bed, and able to smoke his pipe in peace. As he puffs on his cherry-flavored tobacco, he suddenly hears a rustling come from the bushes nearby his house. Getting up in alarm, he looks around, but sees nothing but the blowing of the wind against the leaves he'd just finished raking. Shrugging it off, he lays back against the lawn chair, chalking the noise up to his mind still being freaked out by seeing Rhyme buried not but 2 hours ago, his remains almost unrecognizable. But as he starts to take another puff on his pipe, he suddenly feels a tug on the back of his bathrobe. He looks underneath the side of the lawn chair, thinking Cub's just crawled out of bed and gotten under his lawn chair... but what he sees is a shadowy silhoutte and a pair of blood-red irises...

"Huh... May I hel--"

That's all he's able to get out before the figure rams his head forward into Pop's skull, knocking him backwards and off the other side. As he lays on the ground stunned, the figure picks up the pipe, dropped from Pop's mouth, and lights it, revealing the silhoutte to be none other than Rhyme! He takes a deep puff and exhales a cloud of smoke in the shape of a skull.

"Ah... That's the stuff..."

Pop's just staring at Rhyme, scared beyond belief at seeing the figure buried hours ago now standing before him, smoking his pipe.

"How... how?!"

Rhyme doesn't answer, but with the speed of a rocket jams the narrow end of the pipe into each of Pop's eyes, watching as they burst into pools of viscousy fluid and blood streaming down his sockets, leaving him in darkness..

"Don't worry..."

Without wasting a second, Rhyme thrusts the thick end of the pipe right between the holes that once were Pop's eyes and looks at the writhing bear gleefully.

"I'll light your way!"

Rhyme takes a deep breath and blows hard into the pipe, causing all the tobacco in the pipe to ignite at once and making Pop's head explode into a shower of flames and gore. As he watches Pop fall back, lifeless and headless, he takes ahold of Pops arm, uses his inhuman strength to wrench it off, and looks at it hungrily.

"Smoked and crisped, just how I like it..."

Without wasting a moment, Rhyme tears into the clothed arm, devouring the flesh and bone with greedy delight and not leaving even a droplet of marrow or blood to fall onto the crisp evening grass. Before long, the entire arm has been consumed and, much to Rhyme's pleasure, been transformed back into his right arm, giving him the appearance of a one-armed spectre. But as he swallows the last mouthful, he realizes that there's a unique flavor to it... one that reminds him of the taste of the doughnuts and fried chicken he had eaten before he'd gone to work earlier that day. Realizing he's able to even remember the last meal he'd eaten before he'd left the house the day of his demise gets him to thinking... is it possible that with each part of his body he gets back, it gives him back part of his old self too, as if more blood is being put from his new limbs into his brain and reenergizing parts of his cerebellum... As he flexes his reformed arm and wiggles the fingers to make sure they're working good, he realizes there's only one way to find out and, figuring it's only a matter of time before Cub crawls out of his bed for a drink of water from his Pop and discovers the bear's remains, hightails it out of Pop's backyard, leaving the body near the lawn chair and pocketing the remains of the pipe for himself.

Another 30 minutes later, we pan to the local Happy Tree Batting Cages, where we see a familiar pink-slippered yellow rabbit swinging a baseball bat eagerly at the hard baseballs being shot at him from the pitching machine and hitting a fair few of them. As the balls finally stop being pitched, he lowers the bat and pants in satisfaction.

"15... out of 20... a new record!"

It was then that the sound of coins being dropped into the slot activating the pitching machine reaches Cuddles' ears and, as he looks towards the next batting slot over, he sees a shadowy figure holding what appears to be a baseball bat and set in a batting stance. Before long, the machine starts pitching the balls at a breakneck speed, the figure nailing the first 19 in rapid succession!

"How... how is that batter hitting them that quick??"

But what he witnesses next startles him even more... As the machine shoots the 20th baseball at the figure, the speed of the ball exceeding that of 100 mph, the figure CATCHES the ball, bare-handed!

"Whoa..."

Suddenly, Cuddles sees something that makes him drop his own bat in shock... the figure holds the ball out near their face and, a few moments later, the rabbit watches as the baseball lights on fire! It's then that he sees his biggest shock of the night... the figure is Rhyme!! The same deer he'd witnessed being buried earlier that very night!

"You?? What the he--"

The rabbit's not able to get anything else out before Rhyme pitches the fireball with his solid hand straight through the mesh chainlink fence seperating the two slots and right into Cuddles' face, knocking the rabbit to the ground. Stunned and unable to get up, Cuddles can only watch breathlessly as Rhyme comes out of his slot, revealing his almost vapor-like form to the rabbit and grabs him by his neck, bringing him up to his feet momentarily before throwing him hard against the fence, causing him to get stuck by his face onto two of the sharp ends of the fence. He's so busy struggling to free himself that he doesn't even see Rhyme raising his own bat and rearing it back...

"Batter up!!"

With all his inhuman might, he swings the bat straight towards Cuddles' stuck head as the camera pans to the ground near the rabbit's struggling slippered feet. Suddenly, we hear the bat make contact with a grotesque-sounding thud as blood showers the ground and we see Cuddles' feet stop moving, his hands falling lifelessly by his sides. It's then that the camera goes back to Cuddles' head... or what used to be it anyway... Most of the rabbit's skull and brains are splattered on the ground outside the chainlink fence, having been thrust forcefully through the holes in the fence by the impact of the bat being slammed against it. What little is still on the inside of the batting cage is mostly wrapped around Rhyme's now gore-soaked bat. Without wasting a beat, Rhyme rears up and swings the bat in a high arc right underneath the rabbit's left armpit, shattering the bone and internally severing it from the dead rabbit's body. Now only held by the bare flesh, it takes very little for Rhyme to grab ahold of the arm and rip it from its socket, looking at the arm hungrily and licking his lips. Rhyme doesn't even stop to think before he tears into the arm, consuming the flesh and bone eagerly and devouring it all within moments. As the deer looks on in satisfaction, he watches as the bits of the arm swirl around in his vapor-like forearm before slowly reforming into his own green-furred arm. Whacking the now-solid arm against the fence and giving a soft growl of triumph as he feels the vibration travel through his arm and into his body, he's slowly reminded of the feeling of the flames licking against his skin from back in the coffin. What he was even doing in a coffin escapes the deers tattered mind...

"The only way... to remember...", Rhyme realizes, his mind nearly destroyed, "is to get back... my full body..."

But a sudden shriek interrupts Rhyme's clouded thoughts and as he looks out through the chainlink fence, he sees Handy standing nearby Cuddles' spattered brains, a look of terror on his face at seeing Rhyme back from the dead and the rabbit now in pieces. The beaver turns to run away, but Rhyme is too fast for him and before Handy knows it, the demonic deer's picked up the bat, gotten out of the cage, and leapt upon the poor beaver, pinning him down on the ground. A sharp jab to Handy's gut from the metal bat causes the beaver to scream in agony, Rhyme lapping up the screams like a dog would a bowl of water. But as Rhyme raises the gory bat above his head, ready to bring it down and splatter Handy's skull like a ripe melon, he sees the beaver start to cry, begging him for mercy

"Please... don't hurt me... please..."

Seeing Handy pleading for his life, the first set of tears he's seen all night, he starts to feel a sudden migraine and clutches his head violently, screaming loudly

"Can't kill... CAN'T KILL!!"

With a panicked look on his face, he scrambles off of Handy and looks at him, terrified at the sudden realization of what he's been doing, a shred of his former self starting to emerge...

"Get... get away... NOW!!"

Rhyme starts to feel the hunger for blood reemerging and, tossing the bat towards Handy, nailing him in the stomach, he rushes out of the batting cage park, leaving the carpenter beaver gasping knelt on the ground, vomiting up blood and bile from the blows to his stomach. But as Handy slowly gets up, spitting out the last few red and yellow droplets and watching Rhyme's silhoutte vanishing into the darkness, he realizes he needs to tell Mime about his cousin's "rebirth" and maybe get the silent deer to help him take down his possessed cousin. Groaning from the nausea coarsing through his bruised stomach, he slowly walks out of the batting park, headed for Mime's circus tent...

A little ways away, we see Rhyme duck into a dark alley, panting heavily after the altercation with Handy. By now, his hunger has fully returned and he's wondering why he let Handy escape... when he could've gotten more of his body and brain back from one of the legs of the amputee beaver.

"Now how will I get my body back?? I let my meal get away!!"

But the deer doesn't have long to ponder before he hears the hysterical laughter of a certain sugar-craving squirrel nearby and, sure enough, he soon sees Nutty running by, giggling and clutching a big bag of sweets to his chest. But as he runs past the dark alley, Rhyme sees a big red jawbreaker slip out of the sweets bag, landing on the street unnoticed by the hyperactive squirrel and he starts to get a sick idea in his head. Fetching the big candy and holding it tightly in his palm, he yells out in his best falsetto-voice to where he sounds almost exactly like Cuddles.

"Hey dude! You dropped your jawbreaker in this dark alley!!"

It only takes a few moments for the squirrel to run back to the alley, looking eagerly for his lost candy and it takes an even shorter amount of time for Rhyme to light the jawbreaker on fire, tossing it in the air and catching it while stepping out of the shadows of the alley and giving the squirrel a big shark-like grin

"Hee hee hee... Who can take the candy..."

Nutty can only look in horror at Rhyme coming towards him, petrified at the sight of the deer he'd seen being laid to rest now standing before him

"Sprinkle it with gore..."

Nutty turns to run, but Rhyme quickly leaps upon him, pinning him to the street

"Turn it into something yummy and yet evil more..."

Rhyme quickly thrusts the fiery jawbreaker down Nutty's throat and quickly places his hand against the squirrel's throat, cutting off his air supply and preventing him from being able to swallow the jawbreaker, causing him to gag and gurgle as he struggles to breathe, the flames licking and scorching the back of his windpipe...

"The Fireman can..."

As Rhyme watches, Nutty's gasps for air slowly start to grow weaker and, with a fierce punch, the deer slams his fist down onto the bulge in Nutty's neck, shattering both the jawbreaker and his windpipe, silencing the squirrel. Watching Nutty's head fall back against the street as blood pours from the gaping hole in his throat, he lets out a demonic laugh before he turns around and uses his strength to rip off Nutty's left leg, looking at it hungrily

"The Fireman can causes he mixes it with blood and makes the body taste good..."

With a happy cry, he sinks his teeth into the flesh of Nutty's leg, savoring the sweet taste of the sugar-enriched blood and bone of the squirrel. Before long, the whole of the leg has disappeared down Rhyme's throat and, as the deer watches with delight, the bits of bone and flesh slowly reform into his left leg, leaving only his right leg in the bloody-vapor form made by the petals from the roses and D.B's blood. As he looks down at Nutty's lifeless body, his face frozen in a final unrequited gasp for air, he's slowly reminded of the faces of the bodies he saw as he was putting away the cadavers before he fell asleep in the coffin, although he cannot think of WHY he was putting away dead bodies.

"All I need is my other leg and it all should became crystal clear... and I know who my last meal is gonna be..."

As he walks away, leaving Nutty's dead body lying in the street, he turns his head back towards the squirrel's corpse and sings the last line of the song he'd been whispering while he'd multilated Nutty's body

"And the body tastes good... cause the Fireman thinks it shoooooould!"

A little ways away...

We pan into what appears to be a teakettle heating on a stovetop, steam blasting from its spout. Suddenly we see a green-furred hand reach towards the knob on the stove and turn the heat off. As it takes the teakettle off the stove, it becomes quickly apparent whose hand is holding the whistling pot by the cameo-covered arm... Flippy. Sure enough, as we pan off the stove and onto the nearby table, we see the war veteran calmly pouring the tea from inside the pot into a cup and taking a soft sip, the tranquil taste of the liquid helping him forget the horrible event he'd had to go to a few hours earlier. It had been all he could do to keep his cool after seeing Rhyme's charred "body" lying there in that coffin. But as he sips the warm drink, a knock at the door echoes through the house, startling the bear. Flippy sets the cup of tea down on the table and starts to head for the door, but as he passes his living room, where a warm fire is roaring in his fireplace, he hears a sudden loud crack followed by a soft thud and the bear ducks against the nearby wall, panting heavily. Already a little freaked from earlier, his mind's already placing the sound to being that of one of his buddies in his platoon being decapitated and their head falling onto the mud and before long, he's transformed into his own evil alter-ego. Going to his closet, in the process revealing the sound to have been nothing more than one of the logs in the fire crumbling into the flames, he pulls out a small hand scythe and presses the sharp tip against his finger, drawing blood. After seeing the droplet of blood ooze from his hand and drip onto the floor, he lets out a sinister laugh, readies his scythe to attack, and yanks open the door, swinging the scythe down expecting to bury it into a poor souls head. But instead, he feels something catch his arm in mid-slash and as he looks in the doorway, he soon finds himself staring into Rhyme's cold and cruel glare, the deer having caught Flippy's arm in mid-attack.

"Back from the dead, eh... Allow me to put you back in hell!!", Flippy screams as he punches Rhyme in the gut, causing him to fall to the ground and bringing his scythe back up to slash it through the deer's neck. But as he swipes down towards the deer's throat, a swift uppercut from Rhyme knocks him down and out and causes him to drop his scythe as the screen goes black...

A few minutes later, we focus back in to see Flippy's face, upside-down, slowly regain conciousness. The camera zooms out, quickly revealing the war-veteran strung up in his own Christmas-light snare trap, the same one he used in "Easy for you to Sleigh". Flippy doesn't have to wait long to figure out how he got up there as Rhyme walks up to the hung bear, wielding Flippy's hand scythe, which is now surrounded in flames, and giving an inhuman grin to the bear.

"Hee hee hee... too bad you forgot to take down your lights..."

With a sudden swipe, Rhyme rips the scythe through Flippy's chest, causing a thick stream of blood to fall down onto his face and making the bear sputter and gasp as his ribcage is now the only thing preventing his organs from spilling onto the floor.

"What... what are you doing?!"

Rhyme doesn't answer, but merely lifts up the scythe and holds it gently against Flippy's neck before he whispers to the frightened veteran

"Just cutting a few loose ends..."

With that, he fiercely tears the blade through Flippy's throat, causing dark blood to spray from his jugular onto the deer's face. All Flippy can do is look in horror at Rhyme as his vision starts to turn black from the cold grasp of death clutching him

"No... how... how can it be..." is all he's able to gurgle out before the last of his blood drips out of his torn neck and he succumbs to his blood loss, dying upside-down and suspended from his own trap. Without wasting a second, Rhyme uses the scythe to sever Flippy's leg and grabs the appendage in his hands, eyeing it greedily.

"Nothing like military-grade gore!"

Rhyme tears into the limb, devouring every shred of what once was Flippy's right leg, and watches as the last of his missing limbs slowly reforms. But even with his body whole again, he still doesn't know what killed him...

"How can this be... I got my body back... but I still don't know what happened to me!! Who am I? How did I die... What happened to me!!"

With an insane-sounding cry, he brings the fiery scythe back, and thrusts it forward...

A few feet away, two theiving raccoons are busy sneaking in through the open front door, out for their usual nighttime heists. It's their first stop of the night and, after being witness to Rhyme's burial earlier, it's a much-needed distraction from the fear that filled them when they saw the deers remains.

"Hee hee hee hee hee... This is gonna be a great haul!!", Lifty says holding the bag for their loot

"You know it, my brother! Especially since the whole town's gonna be in mourning over--"

It's then that Shifty walks into the hall where Flippy is and what he sees makes him stop dead in his tracks, everything he'd eaten earlier in the day wanting to come up his throat...

"Oh... my... god...", he whispers in horror

"What?? Why'd you sto--", Lifty starts to say, but his brother can only gag and put shakily ahead of him. It's as Lifty turns to where Shifty's pointing that we see what the raccoon saw... Flippy's guts, his fingers, chunks of his flesh... they're all laying under the veteran's suspended body in a large puddle of blood and more of them keep falling down. Shifty falls to his knees and starts to vomit violently, overwhelmed by the horrible sight.

"Who... who could have done this?!", Lifty wonders as he tries to block out the disgusting sound of his brother barfing onto the floor. But as he watches in shock, a familiar face, now saturated in blood, peers around from Flippy's hung corpse at the sound of Shifty getting sick.

"No... no more!!", Rhyme screams as he pushes Flippy's body away and runs towards the two raccoons, madness starting to overtake him completely. He tackles the sick Shifty and pins him to the ground,

"What is happening to me?! Tell me!!", the deer screams as he presses the blade against Shifty's pale face. "Tell me now!!".

"I... I don't know!!", is all the terrified raccoon is able to get out.

"Lies!! All lies!!", Rhyme yells as he raises up the scythe, "Tell me what happened!!"

It's then that he feels a tug on his jacket and as he looks behind him, he sees Lifty pulling on Rhyme's jacket, trying to get him off of his brother. But Rhyme's got such a tight grip on Shifty that all Lifty's able to do is pull the jacket off of Rhyme, revealing a sight that makes Lifty start gagging violently... The deer's burnt and stitch-like chest, jagged stitches running all over his body from where his limbs and torso became whole again. Looking down and seeing the scars running up and down his body is more than the deer can handle and he starts choking Shifty violently, screaming at the top of his lungs

"WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?! WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!"

"RHYME... STOP!!"

Hearing Shifty's gurgled cry, he can't help but look down at the raccoon and release his grip on his throat a little, perplexed by what he just called him.

"What... what did you call me??"

"Rhyme... you're Rhyme..."

At hearing Shifty saying his name, a small part of his memory starts to reform and he remembers the ringmaster introducing him during his show the day before his death...

"Put your hands together for the first of the stars of Splendid's Circus... Rhyme!!"

At seeing himself stepping onto the circus spotlight, a small sense of relief starts to ebb through Rhyme's body.

"I... I'm Rhyme... I remember..."

He lets go of Shifty's throat and gets off of the prone raccoon. Getting up slowly, Rhyme looks at what's left of Flippy's corpse and can't help but feel a bit of his rage starting to reemerge as he stares at both the corpse and his gore-soaked scythe...

"But... what happened to me?? How'd I go from a star... to THIS?!"

It's then that the TV in the living room, evidently working on a timer, starts up and a commercial rings throughout the house, one that reaches the ears of the three occupants inside still breathing

"BACK IN BUSINESS, HAPPY TREE MORTUARY! YOU STAB 'EM, WE SLAB 'EM!"

At hearing the commercial blaring through the house, another part of Rhyme's tattered memory comes back to him, one that makes his eyes open wide

"The mortuary... I remember being there when I... That's where I died!!"

Dropping the scythe on the ground near the puddle of Shifty's puke, he coldly starts to walk out of the house leaving Flippy's remains dangling by the christmas light trap and the two raccoons staring stunned at him, his hunger for blood almost completely satiated and replaced with a desire for his sanity

"Where... where are you going?", Lifty softly whispers, still in shock at all he's witnessed...the likes of which will probably haunt him forever

"To find out what happened to me... the mortuary will have the last few answers..."

As they watch the possessed deer walk out the door, bloody footprints left behind, they look at each for a split second before Shifty speaks...

"You go get Mime and meet me at the mortuary... I'm gonna check out Rhyme's resting place..."

"You got it!", Lifty replies before he runs out the door. Shifty starts to go out as well, but the kleptomaniac part of him kicks in and he can't help but wonder...

"Did he have any money in his wallet before he died?"

Shifty, knowing the pockets of Flippy's gear are on the front of his chest, walks around to Flippy's front to check his pockets... only to see a sight that makes him instantly nauseous... The war-veteran's body is totally destroyed. All of his fingers are lying now on the floor below him as are his organs, large chunks of his flesh, and even a little bit of his brain. His face is barely even recognizable anymore, one eye burst and the other now rolled back into his head, his nose torn off completely with flecks of brain matter pulled out through the nasal passages as if in the process of mummification, and all the fur from above his eyes torn off and laying hung from his head like a hoodie. His chest is torn open completely, all of the internal viscera gone with the exception of a small part of intestine hanging now at the back of his empty chest. Shifty covers his mouth, gagging violently, and runs out of the house to a nearby bush where he starts throwing up violently to the point where some of it almost comes out of his own nose. After emptying his stomach's contents all over the hedge, he leans up and, wiping his mouth off on the back of his arm, looks back at the open door leading to Flippy's body and, keeping his head turned away, goes to the door and carefully closes it... sealing off the grisly sight of the disemboweled war-veteran as we iris in on the light from the hallway slowly being closed shut..

Moral: Never start what you can't finish!.


	3. Back to the Beginning

**All fired up Part 3**

On the other side of town, we see the Happy Tree Mortuary with a big sign saying "GRAND REOPENING". Lumpy walks up to the front doors and, unfastening the padlock as he gets ready to reenter the building for the first time since the tragedy, the only thing on his mind being "is my cheese collection ok?" But as he walks in, we see a set of blood-red eyes staring through a set of nearby bushes, a set belonging to one warped deer who, at the sight of the moose starts to recall being given orders by the same blue moose the same day of his death only hours before... and his rage gets even hotter, thinking the moose may know what happened to him and knowing either he'll get Lumpy to talk... or cut out his tounge...

We pan to the cemetery, where Shifty's going through the tombstones looking for where he watched Rhyme being lowered earlier that day, murmuring to himself in squeakense

"Rhyme... where are you??"

It's then that he stumbles upon the HUGE crater in the ground and a small chunk of tombstone laying on it's front in the center. Carefully climbing down into the hole, shuddering at the thought of all the skeletal remains in the ground around him and hoping that this is all a bad dream to him, he lifts up the small slab of granite laying in the dirt. It's only when he sees the fragmented squeakense-print words on the broken-off slab that he's fully convinced that this is all for real...

RE LIE

RHYME

PREFOR

AND FRIE

TO ALL

"So it is him... Mime is never gonna believe this..."

As if on cue, he climbs out of the crater and sees the silent deer approaching the grave, his head down so no one can see the non-mimed tears streaming down his cheeks and a bouquet of flowers in his hands. The raccoon immediately calls out to Mime, getting his attention.

"Mime!! Rhyme's not here!!"

The deer raises his head up and, seeing the dirt-covered raccoon running towards him, raises an eyebrow at what the kleptomaniac has just said... How could his cousin not be here, he was buried only hours ago...

We pan back to the mortuary where we see Lumpy opening the doors of the building and walking in... Rhyme waiting til the moose is out of range til he approaches the open doors... each step almost like a mile to the fawn in his desire to find out what happened to him...

A little ways off, we see Lifty in the town still looking for the Mortuary, having seen his brother and Mime rush past not but a few minutes ago, the former saying something about running into Mime at the graveyard, his curiousity and fright at their highest peak from seeing Rhyme out of the grave, along with his annoyance at his brother leaving him behind!

"He's going to the same place I am!! He could've at least told me where the building was!!"

But as he looks around the city for some telltale sign of where the mortuary is, he hears, for the second time that night, the sound of someone getting violently ill and, looking towards a nearby alley, he sees Handy on his knees retching badly, his stubs held against his bruised chest. Noticing a large amount of blood pooling up in his vomit, the raccoons walks over to the beaver and asks what happened to him. The choked response he gets is one that frightens him badly

"Rhyme... he attacked me... he ate Cuddles and attacked me!!"

"Rhyme??", Lifty sputters out in shock, "But we just saw him mutilate Flippy! He almost killed my brother!!"

"What... do you mean almost??"

"He heard something about the mortuary and took off! Shifty and Mime are on their way there right now!"

"The happy tree mortuary?? I... know where that is!!"

Shakily, the carpenter beaver gets up, wiping his mouth off on one of his stubs, and motions for the raccoon to follow him as he walks shakily out of the alley...

It's back to the mortuary... or rather the inside of it as we see Rhyme slip in through the door, closing it softly behind him. As soon as the door shuts, he hears the sound of the furnace being lit back up and heads towards the source of the noise, only to see Lumpy standing at the controls of the cremating machine, a big goofy smile on his face. Hearing the crackling of the flames reminds him of the last sound he heard before... before he died... It's then that it almost all becomes clear to him how he was killed...

"I... I died in that furnace..."

Hearing the cold whisper coming from the entrance of the room, Lumpy turns towards the door and what he sees makes his jaw drop straight through the floor... Rhyme standing at the doorway with a transfixed look in his eyes...

"You?! Rhyme?!"

"You... do you know what... what happened to me?? Was I in that thing?!"

"GET AWAY!! YOU'RE A ZOMBIE BACK FROM THE DEAD!!", Lumpy screamed, his voice reaching a falsetto

"What the hell are you talking about??"

"You're back for revenge..."

It's then that Lumpy says five words... five simple words that are all it takes to make it all painfully clear what happened to Rhyme... five words he says right as Lifty, Shifty, Mime, and Handy finally get into the mortuary

"Just because I killed you!!"

The snap in Rhyme's mind was almost audible to the others inside the building... When Rhyme spoke again, his voice was colder and without any emotion left...

"You... killed me?"

"I-I thought you were a dead body!"

"You... killed me??"

It's then that Rhyme walks towards the moose just as Handy and the others burst into the room... only to hear the deer scream...

"YOU KILLED ME!!"

With that, Rhyme charges Lumpy and tackles him, pinning him firmly against the control panel and strangling him as the 2 raccoons, silent deer, and amputee beaver watch in horror... All the while Rhyme just keeps screaming the same three words over and over...

"YOU KILLED ME!! YOU KILLED ME!!"

Lifting the moose up with one hand, he drags Lumpy over to the furnace door and, opening the steel gate, tries to shove the moose into the incinerator

"YOU KILLED ME!!" YOU KILLED ME!!"

"Rhyme... STOP!!"

Hearing the voice of the amputee beaver, the same voice he'd heard crying earlier, he turns to the carpenter beaver, his face now a mask of inhuman rage...

"GO!! I MUST... I MUST KILL HIM!! HE KILLED ME!!"

"Rhyme, listen!! Mime's here... Please... stop!! We can help you..."

At hearing Mime's name, he starts to remember his cousin getting into a second coffin... but can't think of seeing him emerge..

"No... you're lying... YOU'RE LYING!! He died too!! That moose... he killed BOTH of us!!"

It's then that the stark realization echoes into Handy's mind, as he steps cautiously towards Rhyme, who's still got Lumpy struggling not to get pushed into the furnace

"You.. you don't remember what happened... do you??"

"You... know??"

"Mime "told" us earlier", Lifty murmured, starting to step forward, "He "said" that you two were working here... that you got locked in and, looking for rest, crawled into the coffins..."

"Then...", Shifty piped in, joining his brother, "Lumpy came in, saw your coffin by the furnace, and... sent you on the treadmill and into the incinerator... By the time Mime was able to push Lumpy away and stop the machine... it was too late..."

It's then that the deer, finally realizing all that had happened, felt his sanity finally start to take hold of him once again and, throwing the moose down to the cold floor, gets up and walks, stumbling a little as if in a daze, towards the 3 of them...

"But then... where... where is Mime?! Where's my cousin??"

Finally, Mime steps out of the pitch-black shadows and runs towards his cousin, non-mimed tears pouring down his face as he hugs Rhyme tight, and it's then... it's finally then... that Rhyme feels his bloodlust... his anger... all his madness drain away as he hugs Mime back, gently stroking and cooing to his silently crying cousin, all the while fighting back tears himself.

"It's ok, Mime... we're ok now... I'm back..."

As they look at the two embracing, Lifty, Shifty and Handy can't help but breathe a sigh of relief, thinking that the nightmare's all over... at least until Handy sees Lumpy reaching for a small bone saw and raising it above his head...

"Lumpy!! Stop!!"

Hearing Handy's cry, Rhyme turns around and looks at the moose, puzzled as to why Handy cried out. But before the deer can even react, Lumpy brings the saw down onto Rhyme, impaling it right between his eyes. With a shuddered gasp, Rhyme's eyes roll back into his head, and he collapses to the ground, slowly falling from Mime's grasp. All the deer can do is mouth out "No...", as he looks at his cousin lying on the cement floor... But a deep growl from Lumpy catches his attention and as he looks up, he sees Lumpy coming at him with a shovel and an angry look in his eyes and he slowly backs up towards the beaver and raccoons, all 4 of them now terrified

"You all know too much... I won't go back to the lettuce farms... I won't!!", the moose cries as he approaches the four of them, his shovel banging against his hand, ready to make sure no one knows about his mistake. But as he raises the shovel above his head, he feels a sharp pain enter his back and, dropping the knife and reaching behind him, the moose pulls out the now-bloody bonesaw... the same one he had just used on Rhyme... and as he looks around, he sees Rhyme standing before him, a small trickle of blood now oozing from between his eyes and a dark smile glistening on his face as the last bit of his madness peaks through...

"After... after all I've been though... you thought impalement could kill me again?? I killed that veteran bear... and now..."

Tackling the moose and dragging him to one of the coffins similar to what he and Mime had been resting in at the beginning, he opens the coffin door and, after shoving the moose inside, closes the lid and fastens it shut, putting a second bonesaw in through the top and bottom of the side of the coffin, preventing it from opening as he uses the last of his demonic strength to toss the the coffin onto the treadmill leading into the incinerator...

"It's time... that we sent you down... down to the fiery depths of hell... just like him...", he mutters to the closed coffin before he turns back to the 4 watching it all in terror. "Mime... start it up..."

Without wasting even a heartbeat, Mime rushes over to the control panel and, with a small grin creeping across his face, pushes the button starting up the treadmill... slowly dragging the coffin into the flames as the moose pushes and screams frantically for someone to help him... but no one makes a move to free Lumpy from the coffin... after discovering he was the cause of all the chaos in the first place, no one feels even the slightest sense of pity for the moose and as they watch the coffin slowly become completely engulfed in flames they hear Lumpy's screams slowly die out, waiting quite a bit before Rhyme has his cousin send the treadmill into reverse, allowing the coffin, now a crisp black color, to emerge. As Rhyme removes the saw pinning the coffin shut and opens the casket, he sees that all that is left of Lumpy... is a small pile of ashes... and a single shred of skin, identical to the one now missing from the deer's own forehead from where the bonesaw went in. Without even a moment's hesitation, he picks up the shred of flesh and swallows it whole, feeling the stinging feeling as it reforms into the spot in his skull and before he shuts the door down on the remains, he whispers one last message to the cremated moose...

"May you never rest in peace.."

It's then that Mime rushes back to his cousin and we finally... FINALLY... iris in on the two deer cousins embracing... the nightmarish ordeal... finally over...

Moral: The end is never easy to find!


End file.
